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September 2006 - Newsletter Dear Friends,
It has been a wonderful and
exciting year. So much joy, so many marvelous people and
I traveled to Japan in the
summer. I spent time at my favourite place on the planet, my
I was invited to Japan to
meet with a Kabuki theatre group, the only troupe of women
I had an amazing trip to
Tuscon in February where I played at a symposium on Healing
While on that trip I was
able to attend the largest gem and rock show in the world. Huge In the fall I traveled to Utah where I played for Dr. Pam Peeke at another one of her marvelous retreats. Picture me on top of mountains playing my shakuhachi to the group while eagles soar on the haunting melodies floating out over the valleys below. The climbing is a wee bit arduous but the views are spectacular. What a fantastic planet it is! I continue my monthly trips to Ottawa. Teaching the shakuhachi, offering healing sessions, playing for workshops and at special events, my Ottawa trips are busy. I always manage to have extra fun while there with my wonderful friends, especially with smiling Ruth and fairy Wendy. We offered our yearly Ottawa Healing Music benefit, this time in support of the Friends of Hospice. Shakuhachi and voice, with Steve onpiano and Ian on harp, a beautiful night of music. My shakuhachi teaching has expanded and I brought together students from Ottawa, Toronto and Guelph for a Shakuhachi Play Day. We had a master class then ate a wonderful Japanese dinner. What an amazing group of shakuhachi lovers. I offered a series of workshops with my friend Lorraine. When I combine my music with Lorraine's poetry, magic happens. We had many special events but the themes generally centred around the topics of Spirituality, Wellness and Creativity. I also played at many Labyrinth events, indoors and out including a magical illuminated Labyrinth twinkling by the woods. 800 tealights shining under a full moon! I met many wonderful healers this year, including Roland, someone I knew from a past life in Japan. I am so grateful to have the healing presence of these souls in my life. Two more pieces of news. I had the zany delight to attend a Chris Isaak concert. Do you know his music? Lovesongs full of longing, sadness and joy. During the concert Chris came down into the audience and he danced with me!! He has quite the heart energy, I have almost recovered from the thrill. Last but not least the most exciting news. The new CD, 'Ambient World' is almost here. Number seventeen and this one has drums! It is time to get dancing. I will let you know when we have it in hand.
All the best in the coming
months.
HEALING
MUSIC
Debbie Danbrook is a
master of the Japanese Shakuhachi flute, an ancient instrument
originally played as a type of Zen. Her music has been embraced around
the globe for its healing properties. Steve Raiman is well known in
Japan for his expressive piano recordings and The 'Sacred Sounds' trilogy consists of 'Sacred Sounds for the Spa', 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' and 'Sacred Sounds for Sleep'. The Spa CD offers music for relaxation, the Sleep CD music to help listeners get a good night's sleep and the 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' CD is music for inner reflection. Debbie offers the listener of the Soul CD a vibrational chord that will help in the journey of the Soul. 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul' - building the channel between the earth and the angels. Dedicated with great love and affection to Debbie's Dad, Milton Danbrook. The CD is now available online or telephone 1-888-MUSIC-38 to order.
Sounds For Insomniacs Debbie Danbrook and Steve
Raiman hope that listening to their latest CD No, really. It's not that they record hour-long political speeches and engineers reading textbooks out loud in monotones. Danbrook and Raiman have spent years exploring the field of making relaxation music. They've made 15 CDs together and sold more than 25,000 - not much of a number if you're a rock star looking for a hit but gratifying if you're a pair of Canadian musicians producing spiritual healing music. The ultimate in relaxation, they figure, is sleep. Like many people, Danbrook has had problems for years with insomnia. Their recently released CD, Sacred Sounds For Sleep, has put her to sleep, and kept her asleep for hours when she sets her player to repeat. "We're doing the music for ourselves," says Raiman. "It's part of our own healing process." Danbrook, 45, plays an ancient Japanese flute called the shakuhachi, traditionally reserved for the exclusive use of Japanese monks. She spent three years in Japan learning to play it in the traditional way, then came back to Canada and found her own way to play shakuhachi for healing and relaxation. Raiman, 37, plays piano and is well known in Japan for music he has composed and performed. He has toured that country with his music 15 times in the last few years. Both had their basic musical training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Their music is heavily influenced by Eastern tradition, and also by nature. Danbrook enjoys playing her shakuhachi outdoors, and Raiman looks to nature for inspiration for his piano music and names his works accordingly. Their North American CDs are marketed in Danbrook's name and produced by Raiman. They all feature shakuhachi music, sometimes blended with piano, sometimes guitar or cello, and other times with combinations of instruments and voices. American lecturer and music expert Don Campbell, author of the 1997 bestseller The Mozart Effect, says he is familiar with their music, and appreciates it himself. After living seven years in Japan, he says he admires traditional shakuhachi music, but also enjoys the different effects that Danbrook creates with the ancient instrument. "She makes an interesting bridge between traditional Japanese music and modern Western psychology," he says. "Her integrity is magnificent and her work has a real place in the well-being of our society. She's a bit of a muse." Nobody taps a toe to Danbrook's and Raiman's music. "It's not music you hum," acknowledges Danbrook. "It goes right through you. You feel it in your bones. This is experiential music. You don't listen to it with your ears - you listen with your heart. People respond to it from a different place." They do respond - in numbers, as Judy Brake discovered to her surprise. Brake, senior producer of arts at Studio Two for TV Ontario, found herself almost overwhelmed with audience response after Danbrook played the shakuhachi on the program on two occasions. "We've had Ben Heppner on the show, Jann Arden, Shirley Eikhart, some jazz greats, you name it, but the first time Debbie was on I was inundated with more calls and e-mails than for any of the others," Brake says. "I was getting e-mails for two or three weeks after the program, from people in North Bay, Thunder Bay, Sudbury, all over the province, wanting to know how to buy the CDs. "People said they loved how soothing the music is, what a calming effect it has, a comforting feeling, like an oasis of calm." Danbrook and Raman say they aim their music at helping people transcend the stresses of day-to-day life, including the difficulties of dealing with technology and constant noise. "There always seem to be the sounds of machines, the hum of fluorescence, fans, computers, hard drive sounds, " says Raiman. "It's almost numbing after a while. The shakuhachi is the opposite to that. It helps to centre the mind." Danbrook says playing the music grounds her, and she wants her music to have the same effect on listeners. "All of that noise around us deadens us somehow," she suggests. "Healing music takes us back to our centre, to our core." She was inspired to make the sleep CD after people told her about her earlier musical works, that they really liked the beginning of the CD. "I wondered what was wrong with the end," she says. It turned out that people were dozing off to her music because it was so soothing, and they often didn't hear the end. Then Danbrook and Raiman met American physician Pamela Peeke at a conference. Peeke, an occasional Oprah guest and an assistant professor at the University of Maryland medical school, also speaks on stress-related health issues. They talked together about how many people suffer from insomnia, and Peeke urged the pair to create a sleep-promoting CD. "We live in a sleep-deprived society," suggests Danbrook. "We've cut back on our sleep and we are forcing ourselves to get by on an hour or two less each night than our ancestors got." The healing qualities of sleep occurred to Danbrook after a car accident on the way to visit her family. She suffered whiplash but, in shock, made her way to her destination, stopping briefly for a bag of ice at a corner store. "I sat with the ice on my neck and put my CD on to play, and all three of us fell asleep in our chairs," she recalls. "When I woke up, my neck had released and I was ready to go and get the medical help I needed." She recorded the special sleep CD with a different shakuhachi than the usual one she plays, a longer one that makes deeper sounds. She found it four years ago at an international shakuhachi festival in Colorado. Of the 300 players performing, she was the only woman. Only one shakuhachi maker was there, and it turned out to be the man who had made her instrument. He had this special long flute with him and Danbrook gladly spent $3,000 to buy it, relieved that her credit card limit had just been raised by that amount. Raiman says he and Danbrook often record on special occasions and birthdays. They recorded the sleep CD last Boxing Day, Danbrook's birthday. Peeke, who had helped to inspire the creation of the CD, says she is pleased any time Danbrook records a new one. "I call it healing music," she says. "Debbie's music is constantly playing in the medical environments where I work. My patients find her flute soothing and calming as they work through their own trials and tribulations. It's such a welcome sound. It really touches your soul." Toronto chiropractor and acupuncturist Hideki Kumagai says he believes that some of the health benefits from Danbrook's music result from the relaxation state produced when brainwaves match the rhythms of the sounds she makes with her shakuhachi. "In this day and age of high anxiety, that is healthful," he says. "I've observed at performances that the music puts people into a relaxed state akin to meditation. "Studies have shown the health benefits of a meditative state: it regularizes the heart and respiratory rates, the kidney, the liver and the blood flow. This is pretty obvious, watching people at a performance, and I expect that the same thing happens to people at home listening to a CD." Health is not his own prime motive for listening to Danbrook's and Raiman's music, though, Kumagai admits. "It's fun to listen to, and that's a simple fact," he says. Raiman and Danbrook have worked together for 14 years. They want their music to be a kind of mini retreat for listeners, the two say. "How do you integrate the relaxation you need into your day-to-day life?" demands Danbrook. Everyone's always so busy. If you can't relax at a spa, at least you can stop for a few minutes in your own home, light a candle, have a cup of tea and listen to some healing music." For more information, see Danbrook's and Raiman's Web site at www.healingmusic.com
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Healing
Music is pleased to announce the release of 'Sacred Sounds for the Soul',
the final CD in the 'Sacred Sounds' trilogy. This is Debbie Danbrook's
sixteenth CD and her most personal and intimate recording. This music
features her angelic vocals with Shakuhachi flute, a new flute with a
clear and light tone. The 'stardust' keyboards played by Steve Raiman
and shimmering guitar tracks by Brian Hughes give this latest CD an
exquisitely beautiful soundscape.